President Trump Chooses OMB Nominees

President Trump fleshed out his budget team Friday, naming a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, plus a regulatory administrator.

Trump chose Russell Vought, vice president for the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action for America, to serve as deputy to budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Vought brings 12 years of experience to the table as a Capitol Hill Republican staffer and attorney,. He also served as policy director for the House Republican Conference and was executive director of the Republican Study Committee.

“I’m a conservative first and then a Republican,” Vought told Washingtonian in 2008. “I believe very strongly that Americans should be able to pursue their own happiness and have freedom to do that, have the freedom to choose prosperity and work toward it.”

Chosen to run Trump’s Office of Information and Regulatory affairs is Neomi Rao, professor as the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in Arlington, Va, where she founded a project there called the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Previously, Rao was associate counsel to President George W. Bush; counsel for nominations and constitutional law to the Senate Judiciary Committee and law clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, reports GovExec.